The Witness of Preaching

by Thomas G. Long

Moltmann’s picture implies, we who preach get up from our place in the midst of the congregation, and then we walk to the pulpit and stand in front of the people. There is a distance between us and them, and often we feel this distance keenly. We want to speak the gospel to them, the gospel of grace and demand, and yet we sometimes stand there looking out at people who could hardly seem less receptive. Because we come from them, we know them, know their apathies and divisions, know their broken places and their dull ears—which are, of course, ours, too.

He was pointing to the truth that the more one understands about the task of preaching, the more respectful one becomes of its challenges and the more aware one becomes of one’s limitations.

Preaching that happens “in Christ’s name” is preaching in which the risen Christ is truly present here and now.

God has chosen to meet us in the event of preaching, promised to be present there, and this is not because our sermons are good but because God is good.

Christ is not present because we preach; we preach because Christ is present. Preaching, like all other actions of the church, is joining in on what God is already doing, and we dare to preach because we believe that Jesus Christ is already speaking to the church and to the world.

Herald preachers do not strive to create more beautiful and more excellent sermons but seek to be more responsive and obedient to the message they receive in Scripture. They do not aspire to be poets; they aspire to be mouthpieces of God, servants of the word.

A herald has but two responsibilities: to get the message straight and to speak it plainly.

That is strong medicine indeed. According to Ritschl, herald preachers are not supposed even to speculate about how their sermons were received by the hearers. Were they listening? Were they challenged? Were they moved? These are not proper questions for the herald. Heralds do not attempt to defend Christian doctrine or to persuade people that what they are preaching is true. They only speak the message. They do not say things to themselves like, “Now my hearers will resist this idea, so I must give reasons for it to soften their resistance.” To do that would be to mistrust the message, to try to add some power to it because they fear it is weak.

the pastor image moves all the way to the other end of the preaching spectrum and focuses on the listener, on the impact of the sermon on the hearer.

The herald has one job, remaining faithful to the message, but the pastoral preacher must think about what parts of that message hearers need at this moment and what aspects of the gospel they can receive amid the pain and clutter of their lives. Pastoral preachers, then, are charged with the additional responsibility of developing a communicational strategy designed to provoke change in the hearers.

The herald starts with the Bible as source; the pastor starts with the human dilemma as experienced by the hearer and turns to the Bible as resource.

Pastoral preachers see sermons as healing words addressed to concrete situations of human need.

The pastoral preacher’s query, “How can I help people with the problems of this day?” is a powerful and important question, but sometimes it may simply be too small.

To call the preacher an authority does not mean that the preacher is wiser than others. What it does mean is that the preacher is the one whom the congregation sends on their behalf, week after week, to the Scripture.

Seminary training equips one to be not a professor in the church but, rather, a trustworthy witness.